Best of The Free Press: Stories That Stirred My Soul

Welcome back to our holiday series, Best of The Free Press—your essential guide to all the stories you need to read before the year’s end. Each day this week (except Sunday—that’s for Things Worth Remembering), a different Free Presser will nominate a handful of the illuminating, challenging, or just plain delightful pieces we published over the year, and explain why it’s time to revisit them. Yesterday, king of The Front Page Oliver Wiseman wrote about seven stories that made sense of this chaotic political year. Today, Margi Conklin writes about the stories that pulled her heartstrings.

Merry Christmas, readers of The Free Press! I’m Margi Conklin, and if you're wondering why a writer you’ve never heard of is delivering an address on one of the holiest days of the year, allow me to explain.

I’ve been The Free Press’s managing editor since January 2023, running our editorial team and assigning and editing many of the stories we’ve produced over the past two years. I’m also possibly the most sentimental member of the gang. Oftentimes when editing a piece, I’ve tried ending it on a sweet note, only for Bari to strike it through and write, “too treacly.”

Well, today on Christmas Day, I figured no one is going to mind a bit of treacle. (Right, Bari?) So I jumped at the chance to celebrate a few stories we’ve published this year that stirred my soul, that gave meaning to my life—and hopefully will do the same for you.

“The most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.” That line comes from David Foster Wallace’s 2005 Kenyon commencement speech, “This Is Water,” which Douglas Murray recently covered in his Sunday column, Things Worth Remembering. The lesson seems easy enough but it’s tough to put into practice: We are all fish swimming in water most of us cannot see, and we need to be more humble, more curious, more aware of all that is around us.

This is true if you want to succeed at journalism. It’s also true if you want to succeed at life.

One writer who has helped me see the water is Martin Gurri. Though Martin is a passionate, patriotic American, he feels deeply for the people of Cuba, the country of his birth. When Cuba’s electric grid collapsed in October, I asked him to write a piece about it, and what he sent in plunged me into darkness, forcing me to imagine life in a hot land with no power:

Without fans or air conditioners, everyone, including the very young and the very old, was exposed to Cuba’s blistering temperatures. Without elevators, the old and the sick who lived in apartments were forced to sleep outdoors, in the heat and among the mosquitoes. Without traffic signals, venturing to the streets became a death-defying nightmare. Without light, the human mind itself begins to shut down—the Cuban public, frozen in place by an incompetent and antiquated regime, sank to almost metaphysical levels of hopelessness.

And yet, amid all this gloom, Martin still manages to shine a light: “We are taught by religion to believe in resurrection. The island-wide blackout, inconceivable in a modern nation, provides an omen for the future. Sooner or later, infrastructure collapse will trigger political collapse. . . . Cuba will come back to life.”

Martin’s story, like so many pieces and podcasts we have published in 2024, made me feel the pain of the less fortunate—and also made me appreciate the singular gift of being born in late 20th-century America. I’m ashamed to admit it, but a love of my country is not something I truly felt until after I started working at The Free Press. When I was growing up in a farmhouse in rural upstate New York, and at college in the Midwest, I was always longing for the culture and history of Europe. So at 22, I moved to the UK—and stayed there for more than a decade. Even when I finally came home, I can’t say I entirely valued the virtues of this nation.

But then, over the summer, a Free Press intern wrote a piece that helped me see the water. Elias Wachtel was 18 when he spent six months hiking the full length of the Appalachian Trail during the Covid lockdowns. His entire story about that journey is beautiful, but this paragraph will forever stick in my mind:

Looking out on the land, I realized I was learning to love America by walking it. I thought back on childhood trips to Italy and France, where people prized the local and the familiar: the cathedral across the street, the twelfth-century tavern beside it. America is different, I thought—the land of the frontier, the land of the explorer. To love America is to love something wild and ever-changing; our greatness is measured in space rather than time.

I am lucky enough to work with some of the smartest journalists I’ve ever met, aged 21 to 72. Everyone here is my teacher, but Senior Editor Emily Yoffe is my queen. This year she curated a series, called The Prophets, in which nine writers each chose a thinker who predicted our current turbulent moment.

Many of the subjects I’d never heard of—Bayard Rustin, Mary Ware Dennett, René Girard, Octavia Butler—and I was glad to discover them all. But Rob Henderson’s piece about Eric Hoffer—a German-born longshoreman who never finished college—blew me away. Hoffer’s 1951 book The True Believer predicted the rise of campus ideology, radicalism on the left, populism on the right. And, most incredibly, he envisioned a future leader like Donald Trump.

Here is Hoffer’s description of that leader:

He articulates and justifies the resentment dammed up in the souls of the frustrated. He kindles the vision of a breathtaking future so as to justify the sacrifice of a transitory present. . . .

What are the talents requisite for such a performance? Exceptional intelligence, noble character, and originality seem neither indispensable nor perhaps desirable. The main requirements seem to be: audacity and a joy in defiance; an iron will; a fanatical conviction that he is in possession of the one and only truth; faith in his destiny and luck; a capacity for passionate hatred; contempt for the present; a cunning estimate of human nature; a delight in symbols (spectacles and ceremonials); unbounded brazenness which finds expression in a disregard of consistency and fairness . . .

That a man who died more than 40 years ago could imagine all this made me feel strangely reassured. I figured: If he could make sense of a crazy world like ours, those of us actually living in it could, too. (Here again, I must nod to Martin Gurri, who astutely understands the appeal of Donald Trump.)

I am inspired, every day, by my colleagues who are trying to make sense of our world. I am also grateful for their wisdom and guidance as they help me learn from failure and success, pointing out the things I don’t easily see as we swim through our day-to-day work. (I regularly call my colleague Olly Wiseman for advice. On Christmas Day and all year round, I am blessed to have at least one modern-day “Wise Man” in my life. Check out his column from August, smartly calling out the truth and lies on the campaign trail.)

Sometimes the lessons they offer are stunningly poignant. I am thinking of Free Press columnist Kat Rosenfield’s essay “What the Childless Among Us Leave Behind.” In it, Kat imagines what her legacy will be “precisely because I have no children in whom a part of me will survive after I’ve turned to dust.” Her conclusion is so simple yet so true, and every time I read it, I feel tears sting my eyes:

It’s possible that my legacy, if I have one, may never extend much further than my own front yard.

There’s a climbing rosebush there—a cutting from the gardens at my childhood home. It was a tiny thing when I planted it; now it’s grown so big, so fast, that I can smell the roses halfway down the street when they’re in bloom. Sometimes, I’ve seen my neighbors lingering with their children on the sidewalk outside my house, looking at the flowers.

I think that there’s more than one way to populate the planet—if not with children, then with other things. With invention and discovery. With art and beauty. With lovely things that keep blooming, long after we’ve left the world behind.

Merry Christmas, everyone. And, for the New Year, remember: See the water. Smell a rosebush. There is beauty and meaning everywhere we look.

Beyond the Best of The Free Press, here’s what summed up my 2024. . .

My favorite Honestly podcast: The Making of America’s Most Famous Cheerleaders. I really did not expect to love Bari’s interview with the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders’ director, Kelli Finglass. I don’t like football and I am not a fan of Dallas (apologies to my brother and his wife, who live and raised two awesome children in Big D). But this conversation made me ponder what it means to manage people well and truly pursue excellence.

Best thing I read this year: James by Percival Everett.

Best thing I watched: Nobody Wants This—a fabulous, frothy romp from Netflix, reviewed here by Suzy Weiss.

Best thing I heard: A recording of David Foster Wallace’s speech “This Is Water.”

Best thing I bought: A hot dog and a shake for my dad, when we took a weekend trip to our favorite Hudson Valley ice cream parlor, Cherries.

Best thing I ate: Everything my husband makes. He doesn’t just write about food, he could be a professional chef.

Biggest regret of the year: That too often I reacted when not reacting would have been a better reaction.

Best thing that happened: Surviving the election.

New Year’s resolution: Less drinking, more listening.

What I am most looking forward to in 2025: Helping The Free Press grow even more, while also (hopefully) enjoying a better work/life balance. I need to read great books, see old movies, hike mountains, travel abroad, talk to my closest friends, and be more present with the people I love. You know, the most important things in life.

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